For members of SteamGifts.com that like to play the games they have won and for giveaway creators that like to see their games getting played.

GROUP RULES

You have and keep a public Steam profile;

You will play games you win via this group within one month;

When creating a giveaway it is recommended to include a small group rule reminder in your giveaway, something like: "This is a Playing Appreciated giveaway, by joining you commit to playing this game within a month when won.".

MONITORING

All group giveaways will be monitored in the Playing Appreciated group tool[www.playingappreciated.com]. Starting from the giveaway ending date, the month to play the game starts. We expect all winners to give the game a real and serious try. If this isn't the case after one month a giveaway has ended, the giveaway winner will be removed from the group. Only if the winner thanked the creator in the giveaway, we will give a warning before doing so. More information can be found in the group FAQ.

HOW TO JOIN

You can find all information how to apply in the SteamGifts Application topic[www.steamgifts.com].

How time goes by so fast! With over 600 active members and 3000 giveaways (for a total of 6000 copies and 1600 unique games), we can say it has been a wild six months! :) The number of giveaways has been increasing, with last month setting the record at 786 giveaways[www.steamgifts.com]. The group is very much alive and growing, and we are very happy with how committed members are to play their wins, and how generous giveaway creators have been.

In this announcement we would like to update you about a few recent changes and improvements. Some of which have just been rolled out this week. The FAQ and main page will be updated accordingly soon.

No more reminders

Starting from today we will stop sending reminders to winners who didn't play their games or didn't play them sufficiently. Instead we will only send a warning once a month is over, and only if the winner added a comment thanking the giveaway creator. Members will have 7 days of grace to meet requirements.

Giveaway creator approval

Since April 9th giveaway creators have an option to approve their own created giveaways. This enhancement was well adopted and we decided to evolve it further. At the end of the day, if the giveaway creator is happy with how the game was played, we are likely to be happy too. Moving forward we will not review giveaways that creators already approved. For easy distinction, these giveaways will still be displayed using a lighter shade of green, but will automatically be moved to Played and will be considered as played for all intents and purposes.

Giveaways shared with other groups

As a reminder, the current group policy is that winners are required to play the game if they won it via Playing Appreciated. If they are also members of other groups the giveaway is shared with, we don’t enforce this requirement, as they could have won it even if they weren’t PA members. This policy was recently a subject of some debate. To better re-evaluate its impact and look into alternative options, we are now in the process of gathering more data. For giveaways shared with other groups, where the winner is also member of groups other than PA, the giveaway will either be approved if played sufficiently, or move to Unfollowed if not.

Customizing game data

Currently we (and especially a big thanks for Yirg for putting allot of time in this) are modifying game data (playtime and achievements) for almost every game, to ensure the data is as accurate as possible. The initial data is still based on SteamSpy and Steam, but this is then overridden with data from more reliable sources such as HowLongToBeat.‎com, Astats.nl, Exophase.‎com, reviews from Steam, as well as member feedback and statistics we gathered already in the group tool. If any member feels the data for a game is inaccurate we would encourage them to report this to us. Simply create a topic in the members forum or join the group chat and report it there.

Stricter entrance conditions

As some might have noticed, for the last couple of months we require new members to first play and finish a game before getting an invite. Gone are the days where people just added a comment "invite me", joined the group and then leeched games with no intention to play. We also made it possible to join by creating a giveaway for the group. So far both methods seem to work very well and help weed out freeloaders. Here are some statistics[www.steamgifts.com] gathered last month following a request from group member Rupti.

Planned enhancements; suggestions and comments

Among the planned enhancements to the group tool are the addition of links to Steam reviews and videos by winners. Are you still missing something else or would like to see something done a bit differently? Suggestions and comments are always welcome! Feel free to make a suggestion in a dedicated thread in the members forum or to raise it in the Open Discussion thread, and who knows what will happen in the next six months of Playing Appreciated! :)

Today exactly one month has passed since this group started! We are proud to announce that there are currently 399 members and 300 giveaways, giving away a total of 408 games! In a perfect world that would mean more than one game for every member. We hope to keep it like that and are very happy with this great start and community involvement.

As the group grows bigger, moderation will become more important to adhere to our primary groups goals: playing the games within a month. Therefore I'm pleased to (officially) announce that Yirg[www.steamgifts.com] will be helping with that and has already done so in the last weeks, which is greatly appreciated.

Moving forward

For the most common questions we've made a FAQ on the group page. Due the group size moderation will be become more strict, as doing it case-by-case would simply take too much time. For this reason we have built a group tool[reforced.nl], where anyone interested can see the progress of group giveaways and we can be transparent about it.

Not played winsMany question asked by giveaway creators were about how we will handle games that were not played within a month. For the time being this will be as described below.

For games that were not played within 3 weeks we may add a courtesy warning, but only when the winner thanked the giveaway creator. Moderators will reply to that, giving the winner a handy reminder that he or she has to start playing or they won't meet the one month requirement. This warning will only be posted in the first giveaway the winner is about to miss and will not be repeated.

If the game still is not played after 4 weeks a giveaway will be marked as non-played. We will check the giveaway page for any comment from the winner as to why this happened. If there is no comment, the winner will be kicked from the group without a further warning. When he/she applies to be a member again, the previous winnings have to be played first. On a repeated offence, the member will be permanently banned.

Other questions, comments, suggestionsAlmost every day somebody will be available in the group chat. Feel free to hop by to say hello! We also have an Open Discussion thread where you are also free to drop a message.

That's it for now! Please subscribe to the group announcements forum to get notifications about any further announcements.